Why a 1934 concert is being restaged at Juilliard

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we will learn about a recreation of a historic concert that took place almost 90 years ago. We’ll also get details about the Manhattan district attorney’s request for a silence order before Donald Trump’s criminal trial begins next month.

The concert was initiated by students. The printed program, which was distributed to those who arrived and took their seats in the audience, was typed.

When Fredara Mareva Hadley came across it in the archives of the Juilliard School in Manhattan, the program had yellowed. But for Hadley, a professor of ethnomusicology in Juilliard’s music history department, seeing the program was “one of those moments where you pause,” she said. “It felt like a real treasure.”

The program was from a 1934 concert that will take place Remade tonight at 7:30pm at Juilliard Soprano Denyce Graves will host.

In all caps, the program said Harry T. Burleigh (above) was “chairman.” There was no evidence that he sang. Black Juilliard students were in attendance at the concert. One, Anne Brown, would so impress George Gershwin that he changed the title of his opera from ‘Porgy’ to ‘Porgy and Bess’ – and cast her as Bess. Another Juilliard student would create the role of Serena.

Burleigh’s influence on that concert was undeniable: he wrote two of the songs on the bill and arranged three others.

So who was he?

A protégé of Dvorak

Burleigh was a protégé of one of the greatest composers of the late 19th century, Antonin Dvorak, who created “mainstream music with an American accent,” as his biographer Michael Beckerman explained. “Many composers who followed him—notably Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Duke Ellington—owe him a stylistic as well as an intellectual debt.”

Dvorak wrote one of his most famous works, the New World Symphony, while director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. The school was a short-lived creation of a Gilded Age patron who had lured Dvorak with a salary of $15,000 a year, exponentially more than he earned back home in Prague. Burleigh was a scholarship student there.

“From Burleigh, Dvorak took over the songs that Burleigh knew from his blind grandfather, a former slave,” wrote Joseph Horowitz in his book “Dvorak’s Prophecy” (2021). “From Dvorak, Burleigh gained a greater appreciation for his musical legacy.” After Dvorak’s death in 1904, “it was Burleigh more than anyone else who converted spirituals into concert songs,” Horowitz wrote.

Burleigh was a longtime soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church on Stuyvesant Square, hired despite “the consternation of the congregation, which objected because Burleigh was African American,” according to a Library of Congress biography. He sang there for more than 50 years and missed only one performance. He was also the first black soloist at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side.

In 1934 Burleigh was in her sixties. Hadley said the concert seemed like the only time Burleigh was at Juilliard.

“For those of us now at Juilliard,” the discovery of Burleigh’s involvement “feels like new information,” Hadley told me. “Everyone was surprised that this happened in 1934 at Juilliard – and delighted: ‘1934? Serious?’ This was before most predominantly white colleges in the country even admitted black students.” Juilliard’s records did not indicate how many black students were enrolled in 1934, she said, but Juilliard’s first black graduate had received her degree 27 years earlier.

How brave was it for the Juilliard students to approach Burleigh for a concert? “I go back and forth on that question,” Hadley said. “It was undoubtedly a big win.” But the students who invited Burleigh had probably already encountered him, she added.

The typewritten program from that concert is on display in an exhibit of photographs and memorabilia by black artists and activists with Juilliard connections. In addition to works from the 1934 concert, tonight’s re-creation will feature a new arrangement of Burleigh’s “Sinner, Please Doan Let This Harvest Past” by Damien Sneed, along with new songs by two Juilliard students, Danae Venson and Christopher Armstrong.

“It feels like we’re not resurrecting a relic,” Hadley said. “We listen to what those young people did in 1934 and spread that further.”

Weather

Prepare for another unseasonably warm day with highs in the mid-50s and a chance of rain. Expect rain overnight and a low around 53.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until March 24 (Purim).

How do you remember Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who died Friday after apparently flying into a building on the Upper West Side? Makeshift memorials sprung up over the weekend. And a petition on the website Change.org called for a statue in Central Park. The petition suggested a design of a life-size Flaco on a branch and the placement of the statue “near the tree opposite the compost in the northwest quadrant of the park where he most often stayed.”

Brandon Borror-Chappell, who co-wrote the petition with his friend Mike Hubbard, said that as a regular at the park, he grew accustomed to seeing Flaco. “Now that little spark of magic is gone,” he told me, saying he had just finished running in Central Park. “It hurts.”

The Parks Department said memorial sculptures in parks are extremely rare, especially in Central Park. “Since Central Park was designated a New York City Scenic Landmark in 1974,” a department spokesperson said, “an extremely rigorous public review process has been required before a statue can be installed.”

A gag order for Trump?

Prosecutors in Manhattan asked the judge overseeing the hush-money case against Donald Trump for a “barely tailored” gag order that would prevent the former president from attacking witnesses or revealing the identities of jurors.

The prosecutors — from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office — asked for restrictions that would mirror a similar order upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington. In that case, Trump is accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The Manhattan filing referred to Trump’s “longstanding and perhaps unique history of using social media, speeches, rallies and other public statements to attack individuals he views as adversaries.” The request asked that Trump not comment on the prosecutors in the case — with the exception of Bragg himself. He has long been a target for Trump and his supporters: Bragg’s security chief said in an affidavit made public Monday that some of the worst attacks against the prosecutor last year included racist insults and death threats .

In a separate filing, Bragg placed special emphasis on protecting jurors in the case. His accusers asked that Trump be barred from disclosing their identities. Bragg also asked that the addresses of the jurors be kept secret from the former president.

METROPOLITAN diary

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Dear Diary:

One morning I was late for work, so I decided to take a taxi, a rare luxury. I sat down and the driver and I exchanged pleasantries. He said I was his last ride.

I said he was probably looking forward to going home and getting some rest.

“You don’t understand,” he said, keeping his eyes straight on the road. “You’re not my last ride for today. You are my last ride forever.

He explained that he was retiring that day after 45 years as a taxi driver.

As he drove me from the Upper West Side to East Harlem, he reminisced about his career and the many famous passengers he had picked up.

When we arrived at my destination, I told him I was honored to have been his last ride and wished him the best of luck. He smiled, turned off his meter and drove away.

– Diane LaGamma

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